Scott was back in the big arm chair by the fireplace by the time Logan showed up. It was just after dinner and Scott was attempting to grade essays from his Shakespeare seminar, but kept getting distracted by the contents of the safe by his desk. Warren’s words (“Go ahead, they’re yours”) and Jean’s (“He had plenty of time. If he hadn’t wanted you to find them, he would have destroyed them”) kept coming back to him. He really didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t even know what he wanted to do. Had he spoken to them to get permission? He wasn’t sure. He contemplated retiring to his bedroom so as not to have to look at that picture any more.

The sound of the French doors sliding open made Scott look up from an essay on conflict in Richard III that sounded suspiciously similar to one a student had submitted last year. He was pleased to see Logan standing there, both for the chance to avoid thinking about potential plagiarism for a little while and for the possibility of discussing his indecision about his find with someone who often knew what he wanted better than he himself did.

One look at Logan, though, made him realize it was not a good time to discuss newly found belongings of Charles Xavier. Logan was a mess. That in itself not an unusual circumstance. Mud on his boots and pant legs, leaves and twigs in his hair, rips in his clothing – these were all pretty common. But there was a kind of wild look in his eyes that Scott knew only came with rage – incipient or recent. The claws on his left hand were extended. “Blood will have blood,” Scott thought to himself, looking at the red stains on Logan’s hand and clothes. He could see no visible wounds, but then there wouldn’t be.

Logan stood just inside the French doors and they looked at each other silently for a minute. “Whose is it?” Scott asked, finally.

“Whose is what?”

“The blood on your hand. Is it yours?”

Logan looked down at his hand, with an almost puzzled expression. He retracted the claws and shook his head.

“Whose then?” Scott asked again.

Logan didn’t answer, didn’t move. He appeared to be considering something for a moment. “Stand up,” he said, finally.

Wondering where this was going, Scott put his papers aside and stood up.

“Take off your clothes.”

“Okay.” Scott closed his eyes tight and pulled off his glasses, placing them on the end table next to him. He pulled his shirt over his head and reached for the glasses again.

“No, not yet.” Scott was surprised to hear Logan’s voice right in his ear, not having heard him walk across the room. “Leave them off.” Logan pushed the armchair away, and stood right behind Scott. Scott could feel Logan’s breath on the back of his neck, his hand undoing Scott’s belt. “Take these off, too.” Scott pulled his pants down. Logan pressed up against him, hand reaching around. “Hard already,” he said. “Good. You been thinking about it?”

Scott shook his head. “It’s you telling me what to do. It does that to me.”

“Good,” Logan said again, as Scott kicked off his shoes and pulled the pants off. His fully clothed body pressed hard against Scott’s naked one, Logan licked him on the back of the neck, hands stroking chest and belly.

“Get down on your knees,” he said after a minute. “Lean over the table.”

Scott knelt, bending over the coffee table in front of him. “There’s lube in the left drawer of the desk.” Scott waited, trembling a bit, perhaps from cold, perhaps anticipation. He listened to Logan walking over to the desk, opening drawers, walking back.

“Spread your legs a little.” Scott obeyed and Logan knelt between them. Without warning, a hand slapped him on the ass, hard. Once, twice, three times. Then he was gentle, caressing, spreading his cheeks, lubed fingers probing. The sting of his flesh receded and was replaced by fingers filling him, stroking exquisitely inside. Scott couldn’t help but move with them. He heard a sort of happy grunt from Logan, and then the sound of a fly unzipping. “You ready?”

“Oh yes.”

And then Logan was in him, pushing in slowly until he was balls deep. Then moving in and out, slow strokes matched by those of his hand round Scott’s cock.

“Faster.” Scott said it breathlessly, a feeling of urgency overtaking him.

Logan leaned down, clothed torso heavy upon Scott’s naked back. He spoke in Scott’s ear, still moving slowly, almost lazily. “Not yet,” he said. “You’ll get it fast. You’ll get it hard. I’ll give you what you need. Right now I’m taking my time.” Long, hot breaths in Scott’s ear. “Slow yourself down, Scott. Relax your whole body. You can take it like this. This is how we’re doing it. That’s it. I love your tight hole. I’m gonna push into it nice and slow. So good being inside. Riding you nice and slow. That’s right, you got it.”

Scott just let go, let himself be ridden, stroked, talked to. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. It’s good like this.”

Scott was breathing harder, aching with excitement. Logan pushed deep inside and stopped moving, cock still, filling Scott up. Logan’s hand stroked faster, tugging and squeezing until Scott came hard beneath him. Then Logan resumed fucking him, lying full on his back, moving fast and hard this time. No talking now, biting the back of Scott’s neck a bit, hands stretched way out, claws extending as he came. He stayed inside him afterwards, their heavy breathing and the snikt of Logan’s claws retracting the only sound in the big office.

After a minute, Logan got off of him, pressing Scott’s glasses into his hand. They were back on in time to see Logan zipping his pants up, then lying down on his back on the couch, broad smile as he looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck, that was good. Thanks for the ride.”

Scott pulled the armchair back where it had been and sat down. He stretched a bit, then rested his feet on the end table, reaching over to the couch to stroke Logan’s hair briefly. “I needed that.”

“Makes a change from grading papers, eh?”

“Yeah.” He looked from the clothed man lying on the couch down to his own naked body. “Maybe next time you’ll even take off your clothes. Or at least your boots.”

“He’ll be out of commission for a while. I fucked up his shoulder. He’ll heal.”

“Dammit Logan!”

Logan shrugged. “He pissed me off.”

“You know I’m short-staffed, with Jean hors de combat and Kitty back at college. Could you manage to desist from maiming any X-Men for a while?”

“If they can manage to not piss me off.”

Scott shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you.”

“You put up with me because I’m the best fighter you’ve got.” He turned on his side to face Scott. “I’ll pick up the slack until he’s back on active duty. You know it.” Scott didn’t say anything. “And you put up with me because I give you a good time. Nobody else can make you hard just by telling you what to do. Nobody else can fuck you like I do. I do you like no one else can and you know it. Worth putting up with some stuff.”

“All that and modest, too.”

“I know what I can do, know what I’m good at, what I do best. No point pretending otherwise.” He stretched, his hand coming to rest on Scott’s knee. Scott exhaled loudly, placing his hand over Logan’s.

“You know what I really need for the team?”

“Me cloned. But unfortunately, I’m one of a kind.”

Scott snorted. “I need a psionic. Between Charles and Jean, we could pretty much always count on telepathic support on combat missions. I’m really feeling the lack.”

“What about Billy Halverson? I keep telling you you should recruit him.”

“I don’t know.”

“I tell you, Cyclops. He’s got promise.”

“He’s got school, too. He’s doing really well at Columbia.”

“So what? He can go to college and be an X-Man, too. You run this school; most of us teach. Even Worthington does something, right? I’m not sure what – counts money all day or some shit. We’ve all got more than one job. Same with Billy. If a mission comes up he can miss a class or two.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s not what I’m worried about. It’s the other stuff. We plan our schedules here to include team business. Columbia doesn’t plan around the X-Men. Billy would have to miss a lot of team meetings, trainings – they’d conflict with classes.”

“So what? He’s living here. Plenty of time to train in between classes. He can miss some meetings. And if he can’t make it to all the group trainings I’ll take him on, give him some extra Danger Room practice.” Scott didn’t answer. “What – you worried about me and him being alone? You and me weren’t even together, Scott, when I picked him up that time.”

“I’m not worried about that. I just – well, his college education got derailed twice. Once when his father died, the second time during the war. Now that he’s back on track, I want him to finish.”

“He can finish college and be an X-Man, too.”

“I’ll think about it.”

The phone next to Scott rang, the pattern of the ringing signaling an intercom call from elsewhere in the mansion. “Cyclops,” he said into the phone. And then, “Yeah, I heard. Logan’s being a little more forthcoming. No, he won’t say what happened, either, but he’s not pretending it’s an accident. He’ll be okay?” He listened some more. “Yeah? So what is it?” Then a short laugh. “I guess it fits.” He hung up the phone.

“Jeannie tell you he’ll heal?”

“Yes.”

“What I’d tell you. And I didn’t even go to med school.” He thought a minute. “Not so far as I know, anyway.”

“She said it will be at least six weeks until he’s back on active duty, after what you did to his tendons. She said to tell you to save your claws – and your temper – for the bad guys. He’s claiming he fell on a rake, by the way.”

“Ha!”

“Oh and she also told me Alex has decided on a code name. Havok. With a k at the end.”

“That’s not how you spell it?”

“Logan, can I ask you about something?”

“He pissed me off. I got nothing more to say. There is nothing more to say.”

“Not about Alex. Something else.”

“Go ahead.”

“I found something. Something that belonged to Charles.”

“Just now?”

“Yeah. Well, yesterday.”

“Where was it?”

“In a safe. I didn’t know it – they – were there. Didn’t know they existed.”

“What are they?”

“Journals. Diaries. From a long time ago. Five of them – one for each year, starting in 1994.”

“When you first came here?”

Scott nodded. “I don’t know if he’d want me to read them or not. Jean and Warren think he wanted me to, that he’d have destroyed them if not. But I don’t know. He might have forgotten about them. He had so much he was trying to finish before he died. Maybe he hadn’t looked at them in a long time. Maybe he didn’t mean for me to find them. I wish I could ask him.”

“You’re asking the wrong question, Scott. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter what he wants anymore. The real question isn’t one he can answer, it’s one you’ve got to answer – do you want to know what’s in them?”

This is chapter 3 of a 10-part series. I'm posting one story a day. The entire series will be available here when I'm done posting.

Once again Logan's proven his worth at Scott's side, being his voice of reason and pragmatism. And for some reason it makes me feel all mushy inside;)Per usual, steaming sex! :)I particularly appreciate the way you write their relationship, as matter-of-fact, comfortable, but with an undercurrent of something deeper, and all the time keeping them in character. Excellent.

Excellent. I'm not exactly sure why, but your slash seems more subversive than anyone's I've read. I think it's because you really understand how to use the sex to unlock Scott's character. Or perhaps to be the piece in his puzzle that makes that cypher or a character hang together.

I like how accepting he is of his nature now; how he understands and accepts that Logan giving him orders makes him hard. How he understands that he is safe without his glasses and naked with the wild man.

My only reservation is how calmly he accepted Logan's attack on Alex (and a serious enough attack that his brother is wounded for six weeks!). After all, Scott would not be happy that such an altercation came because of a minor schoolyard/prison baiting.

I am very much looking forward to Xavier's diaries! So good to be back in your X1 universe, Mo!

I think you're right that Scott would be a lot more upset if he knew why Logan had attacked Alex. He also might not be thrilled with the thought that what was fun while it was happening was also Logan asserting for himself just who is whose "bitch". I think Logan doesn't tell him in large part because he knows the reaction would be pretty negative. I also think he was pretty smart not to tell him about it at all until he was somewhat mellow after sex.

LOL! Well, most people who know me well see a lot of Cyclops in me, but there's a fair amount of Wolverine, and not just in my bouncing back from injuries...

About bouncing back from injuries, though, I went for my post-op checkup last Thursday and they were all marveling (ha!) in that office about how quickly I was healing. I asked for a letter for work and the receptionist said "Are you sure you want to go back on Monday? Most people take 2-3 weeks after an operation of this kind." It was at that point that I sheepishly admitted I'd already been back at work for three days.

METAMETAMETA

Maybe we're moved to write certain pairings because both sides of the solidus represent sides of ourselves. I'm sure people do think you're more the Cyclops but you write Wolverine with such verve and joy and humour ("...unts money all day or some shit...") that he has to be an expression of a pissed off anti-authoritarian dom side of you!

I see that with my own OTP. I relate to Bobby's desire to be a good boy and his anxiousness when he isn't pleasing people. His struggles with his sexuality closely mirror mine and he can go from awkward and shy to being a leader as needed. But I'm also John; I'm an angry rebel with a short fuse; I'm an artist for whom the act of artistic creation is almost enough to get me through anything. I'm someone who figured out a lot of his own answers and standards rather than looking to others.

So, writing an OTP can be an act of healing (if the ending is happy) or an expression of the schism (if the ending is sad). Or, best of all, both.

Yay to healing, Mo! BTW, I'm coming to NYC in a couple of weeks, but I'm not sure how open my schedule is. Still, it would be nice to see you.

Re: METAMETAMETA

Re: METAMETAMETA

Yes, exactly. I tend to get in touch with the times when I'm feeling pissed-off, anti-authoritarian and/or dom to write him. And although I kind of hate the whole OTP trope, I agree that a couple stays compelling a long time to a writer or reader if and only if s/he can relate to both of them.

I'd love to see you if it works out. I will be in town until 2/17, when I'm going to France for a week, but I'm sure we both have busy schedules. Still, if we have a mutual schedule hole, let's get together.

Ah, it's journals>. Well, Logan's right, it's totally up to Scott here. What a difficult decision. Boy, if I were him, I'd burn them, but I have a feeling Scott's curiosity is going to overcome his trepidation, and he's going to find out things he rather wished he hadn't.